His uncle, Bruno Piazza, writes Roberto Piazza, escaped alive from the San Sabba rice mill, unlike thirty-three members of his, their, immediate and larger family, and they are Alceo Piazza, Antelo Piazza, Angelo Piazza, Anita Piazza, Bruno Piazza, Donato Piazza, Edvige Piazza, Elio Piazza, Elisa Piazza, Elvira Piazza, Emanuele Piazza, Fernanda Piazza, Giacomo Piazza, Gina Piazza, Gino Piazza, Giuseppe Piazza, Maria Luisa Piazza, Rachele Piazza, Regina Piazza, Sed Angelo Piazza, Sed Camilla Piazza, Sed Cesira Piazza, Sed Consola Piazza, Sed Costanza Piazza, Sed Emma Piazza, Sed Ester Piazza, Sed Eugenio Piazza, Sed Leda Piazza, Sed Marco Piazza, Sed Rosa Piazza, Sed Sara Piazza, Umberto Piazza, Virginia Piazza, who ended up at Auschwitz and Dachau, among them his grandfather, also Bruno Piazza, writes Roberto Piazza. I lay on the floor, on boards, as his uncle, Bruno Piazza, tells it, writes Roberto Piazza, and they beat me until I passed out. At night voices reached my cell, telling me what was happening, and horrible things were happening, someone on the other side of the wall whispered: I am buried alive, no air, thirsty, tonight they’ll shoot me, Bruno Piazza says, but the next morning the man was incinerated, not shot, incinerated, Bruno Piazza says, as Roberto Piazza writes. Then a woman spoke up who said that every night they were shooting people in the back of the head, and after every shot the dogs barked something terrible, that was how they killed lots of partisans, but I got out, says his uncle Bruno Piazza, writes Roberto Piazza.
In the envelope are the names of about 9,000 Jews who were deported to Nazi camps between 1943 and 1945 or killed in Italy, writes Roberto Piazza. There are people from Gorizia, maybe his teacher remembers some of them, writes Roberto Piazza. On the list there are forty-four people with the last name Tedeschi: Ada Tedeschi, Ada Tedeschi, Adelaide Tedeschi, Adele Tedeschi, Adolfo Tedeschi, Alberto Sebastiano Tedeschi, Arrigo Tedeschi, Benvenuta-Ines Tedeschi, Bianca Tedeschi, Bice Tedeschi, Emanuele Amedeo Tedeschi, Emma Tedeschi, Emma Bianca Tedeschi, Ermenegilda Tedeschi, Ernesta Irma Tedeschi, Eugenia Tedeschi, Ezio Tedeschi, Francesca Tedeschi, Franco Tedeschi, Giacomo Tedeschi, Giacomo Tedeschi, Giacomo Tedeschi, Giacomo-Mino Tedeschi, Gino Tedeschi, Gino Tedeschi, Giorgio Eugenio Tedeschi, Giuliana Tedeschi, Gualtiero Tedeschi, Irene Tedeschi, Lidia Tedeschi, Lionello Tedeschi, Luciano Tedeschi, Mafalda Ida Tedeschi, Marco Tedeschi, Marisa Tedeschi, Natalia Tedeschi, Sabato Giuseppe Tedeschi, Salomone Tedeschi, Salvatore Tedeschi, Silvio Tedeschi, Umberto Tedeschi, Vittoria Tedeschi, Vittorio Tedeschi, Wanda Tedeschi, had his teacher, Haya Tedeschi, heard of some of these people? Had she known some of them? writes Roberto Piazza. Was his former teacher, Haya Tedeschi, aware of them? he enquires.
Since he is working on designing this book on famous Gorizians, writes Roberto Piazza, he thought of her as well, his teacher Haya Tedeschi, and he wants to take this opportunity to ask what the war years were like for her, his teacher, does she have any memories, and he would also like to ask her, the maths teacher from the Dante Alighieri Gymnasium in Gorizia, why she never took them in 1975 to visit the museum, which opened that year on the site where the San Sabba camp had been.
Roberto Piazza writes in detail to his former maths teacher from the Gorizia Dante Alighieri Gymnasium about the philosophy of Carlo Michelstaedter, though when she perused his little tractate in 1991 Haya Tedeschi hadn’t understood what it was all for. Michelstaedter came from a prominent Gorizia Jewish family, writes Roberto Piazza. He wanted to study mathematics in Vienna, but he went to Florence to study art history. She, his teacher Haya Tedeschi, must surely have heard of him, of Michelstaedter, writes Roberto Piazza. Today Carlo Michelstaedter is very popular, writes Roberto Piazza, he is even mentioned in the little Gorizia tour guides. He doesn’t want to tire her with philosophy and Carlo Michelstaedter’s biography, writes Roberto Piazza, but if she is interested in the life and philosophy of Carlo Michelstaedter, if she is interested in his paintings and poems, she will find plenty of material even in the modest Gorizia bookstores, he merely wants to remind her of the fate of his (Carlo’s) mother Emma Luzzatto, the fate of his (Carlo’s) sister Elda, the fate of his close friend Argia Cassini, to whom, in 1908, two years before he shoots himself with a pistol belonging to his friend Enrico Mreule, Carlo pens these verses in Piran
Parlarti? e pria che tolta per la vita
mi sii, del tutto prenderti? — che giova?
che giova, se del tutto io t’ho perduta
quando mia tu non fosti il giorno stesso
che c’incontrammo?
While Argia Cassini, Argia Cassini the pianist, in love with Carlo Michelstaedter, plays, writes Roberto Piazza, Carlo paints her portrait, a portrait of Argia Cassini, and on the piano a crystal glass of Picolit rings, and their lips touch and touch the marzipan and blackberries nestled in a warm Gorizia pastry. Argia has thick dark hair, writes Roberto Piazza, and she is twenty-one, the same age as Carlo. Argia Cassini is in the convoy that takes Elda, Carlo Michelstaedter’s sister, first to Mauthausen, then to Auschwitz, Roberto Piazza writes. When the Nazis arrest Argia Cassini and seize all of her property, writes Piazza, she entrusts her daughter forever to the care of her school and wartime friend Elsa Finzi. Roberto Piazza wishes to remind her, Haya Tedeschi, he writes, of her three compatriots, who were taken to Auschwitz that terrible night in November 1943, where Carlo’s eighty-year-old mother Emma and his eldest sister Elda die almost as soon as they arrive, while the third, Argia Cassini, the pianist, dies a year later, writes Roberto Piazza, and he wants her, his former maths teacher, to look for Professor Verzegnassi (he believes the man lives at Via Giovanni 1, if he is still alive) to tell him that he can trust his former pupil Roberto Piazza and send him the drawing of Carlo’s, which along with more of Carlo’s writings Professor Verzegnassi managed to preserve, through the war, from the Nazis, who were bent on destroying what they called degenerate art, because Roberto needs the drawing for the book he is designing, and he will return it to him personally as soon as he comes up to Gorizia, and he will write to him himself, all he needs is his teacher’s blessing, Roberto Piazza writes. He understands the fate of his teacher, Haya Tedeschi, and he urges her to comb through Carlo’s thoughts on persuasion and rhetoric, because in them she may find respite from her nightmares, but, of course, he is not advising her to kill herself. Small towns always have a contingent of chronically unhappy people, writes Roberto Piazza, and hence the general atmosphere of unhappiness leads to numerous suicides to which the weather conditions also contribute. In small towns people are always inclined to suicide. All of them have the feeling they are suffocating, because they are not able in any way to alter the situation they find themselves in. Bernhard says so, too, writes Roberto Piazza. He, Roberto Piazza, agrees with Carlo Michelstaedter that human life is formed of remorse, a guilty conscience, melancholy, boredom, fear, rage and suffering, and that all man’s endeavours show how much he, man, is a passive being who throughout his life re-works, revises and appends his own biography and the biographies of those around him, writes Roberto Piazza. Therefore he doesn’t blame her, his former teacher, for not knowing who was doing what and who was doing the killing at the San Sabba camp, while she, Haya Tedeschi, was going to the cinema and engaging in lovers’ trysts.